I Grieve
by Cat C
Summary: Someone's thoughts in sickbay. Set after the episode "The Gift."


**I Grieve**

**Disclaimer**** - ****Paramount**** and Viacom own the characters from Voyager, although they didn't often treat them right.  The story line belongs to me.**

**A special thanks to:  My friend and editor of all my stories, Mill3rs.**

            Sickbay was quiet and empty with the lights at a dim 10%.  The doors slid open and a solitary figure entered slowly.  "She's gone and I feel..I feel empty."  He walked to the nearest biobed.  "It's not meant to happen this way.  I'm not supposed to feel anything.  After all, we've lost crewmembers before.  I've seen people die on strange planets, on the bridge, and here in sickbay.  But this is different.  This is Kes.  Though she didn't die, really.  What did the captain and Tuvok say?  'She's in another plane of existence.'"

            Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned against the biobed and thought back to when he first met Kes.  _It was shortly after I'd initially been activated._

*  *  *  *  *

            The young Ocampa female sat on the biobed as the EMH ran a dermal regenerator across the bruises on her face.  _Even then, her gentle manner and fragile beauty was evident.  She sat calmly as I healed the brutal marks from the beatings she suffered at the hands of the Maj.  She had beamed up with the away team as well as the strange little Telaxian, Neelix.  They seemed to know each other, and as he turned away, he could hear her arguing that the crew from Voyager had assisted in her rescue from the Kazon.   _

            He could tell that Neelix was in love with Kes by his behavior.  As she began working with him in sickbay and he got to know her better, he could see that she loved Neelix but was not _in love with him.  Others were aware of the feelings between them.  Even Tom Paris, who flirted shamelessly with all of the female crewmembers, behaved in an almost shy manner around Kes.  He was drawn to her but respected Neelix's feelings and was always the perfect gentleman around Kes._

            Kes's loving nature and caring soul made her a confidant to all.  She understood Commander Chakotay's spiritual side and listened, utterly absorbed, to his explanations of vision quests and his medicine wheel.  She was even able to calm the fiery temperament of B'Elanna Torres, Voyager's resident half-Klingon.  Scenes from his encounters with B'Elanna flashed before him as he slowly paced around the surgical bay.  He remembered when she would threaten to re-write his programming and Kes would quietly distract her until she changed her mind and left sickbay.

      _      "Kes had a way of seeing people's characters.  Take Mr. Paris for instance.  When few people on board would even speak to him, Kes saw through the cocky attitude and wise cracking to the troubled and unsure young man he was.  She was the first to realize how caring and courageous he could be and how fiercely loyal to the captain and of course to his friend, Ensign Kim."_

            _Ah yes, Harry Kim.  He and Kes were so very young and green when this journey began.  They both matured into valuable members of Voyager's crew._

            Stopping at the door to the lab, he absently picked up some of the tests that Kes had been working on just days ago.  Kes was so smart and eager to learn.  She was an apt student and excellent medical assistant.  Now, he'd have to put up with Mr. Paris and his acerbic wit.  Kes's studies with Tuvok had been coming along well.  She was learning how to harness her emerging gifts.  "I believe he will miss her as well but of course he'd be too Vulcan to admit it to anyone."

            Then there was Captain Janeway.  She and Kes had grown quite close over the years.  Janeway often treated Kes as a daughter more than a close friend or crewmember.  The end came too soon and much too fast.  There were tears in the Captain's eyes as Kes boarded the shuttle.  "I think the Captain will feel the loss of Kes quite deeply."

*  *  *  *  *

_            He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts and headed for his office.  "She brought so many of the crew together and she threw us ten years closer to the Alpha Quadrant.  We owe her so much."  He sat in his chair and braced his elbows on the desk.  "I counted her as one of my friends.  She was the first one to treat me as a person and not just a compilation of algorithms and subroutines."  He hit his fist on the desk.  "I'm a hologram, damn it!"  Then he lowered his head onto his hands.  "I'm not programmed to feel.  But Kes is gone and it hurts so very much.  Computer deactivate EMH."  The lights sparkled and then disappeared and once again sickbay was quiet and empty._

The end.


End file.
